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Jomo's Sketchbook (1 Viewer)

jomo

Well-known member
I'm flying out to Prince Edward Island this Saturday for a week of touring around the Maritimes (my first visit to the Canadian end of the east coast), so I figured this would be a good opening for my own thread. I'll be travelling with a non-birder friend, so I'm not sure how much sketching time I'll get in, but hopefully I'll bring back something worthwhile to share. Fingers and toes crossed for a puffin!

Photos of sandpiper roosts carpeting the mud flats along the Bay of Fundy have my mouth watering, so I decided I'd better get some time in with those shorebird IDs I'm so horrible at. A day trip to Holland Landing yielded a good mix of adults and early juvies of various species, although I have to wonder what my friends and family would think if they knew I'd spent an afternoon standing next to a sewage pond in the middle of a heat wave ... and then referred to it as a 'good time', no less.

The first page includes some House Wren sketches from yesterday.
 

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lovely sketches as usual, and about time you started your own thread! Have a good trip and fingers crossed for a puffin.
 
I love the wader sketches. You've got the plumage in well on the Pectoral Sandpiper (well, what I mean is that as I am someone who has never seen a Pectoral Sandpiper, it looks good to me!).
 
I adore that Pectoral Sandpiper Jomo, fantastic group of sketches.

Look forward to seeing some more:t:

Matt
 
PEI and Nova Scotia

Well, I didn't really have much time for birding or sketching -- we were rather pressed for time trying to fit everything in as it was -- but I did very much enjoy myself and the beautiful scenery (even though there wasn't a puffin to be found!). I knocked off a few extremely quick sketches during the minute or two I had with a flock of Semipalmated Plover (and a lone Black-bellied) at MacCallums Point before a passerby spooked them, and another quick one later that evening of a Black Guillemot swimming back and forth offshore with a fish as the sun sank.

I don't often do landscapes, but I was so taken with the gorgeous red cliffs found along the PEI coastline that I found a spare half hour to get a quick painting done. Most of this was completed on location (using watercolour, coloured pencil and a base coat of some authentic red PEI mud), with the remainder finished up during that long 18-hour drive back to southern Ontario.

Finally, here's a shot of Cabot Trail winding through the Cape Breton highlands -- my plug for Nova Scotia Tourism! I'll definitely be going back some day.
 

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you got the essential in the sketches, so it isn't a loss that you were pushed for time, though more is always good. Those cliffs are superb however, and your plug has worked, Novia Scotia goes on the list of places to visit!
 
You have these quick sketches down to a fine art Jomo - literally!! Those cliffs are excellent (painting with the earth eh? Raw pigment at it's best!)
 
Thanks, all! -- although to be fair, most of those Semipalms were memory bits done after the whole lot had departed for the sandbars (I'm not quite that quick)!

Took the drive out past Stratford to the Mitchell sewage lagoons for a reported pair of Red-necked Phalarope yesterday, putting around like little wind-up bathtub toys out in the middle of the pond. Only wished they'd come a little closer. Here's a watercolour I'm working on as well, a Redstart I've been meaning to get to since the warbler sketches I did for the Sketchathon in May. My hope is that posting its progress here will encourage me to keep working at it instead of letting it lag for months like I'm prone to do ... but don't hold your breath! ;) I'll probably pull some more discernible leaf shapes out of that background splooshiness later on. (Splooshy is fun!)
 

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Be interesting to see the picture develop - did you paint around the neg shapes or use masking fluid ( I think you call it friskit )?
 
Two more enlightening and informative contributions, Jomo. Try and keep at the redstart - I for one don't get to see anything like enough of your finished colourwork. Anticipating a quick result! (please)
 
Be interesting to see the picture develop - did you paint around the neg shapes or use masking fluid ( I think you call it friskit )?

Mostly masking tape (frisket is such horrid smelling stuff and it's always a PITA to work with, so I used as little as possible here). This is my first time using tape for masking, and although it did bleed in a few of the damper areas of the wash I found it much quicker and easier than the frisket (even after cutting around all of those leaf shapes).
 
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